Good morning.
Anti-Malwre - “PC Protection From Nasties In General”.
It is very easy to become paranoid and feed that paranoia by installing layer upon layer of protection, while ignoring or forgetting that something like 99% of malware infection is self-inflicted, i.e., the result of sloppy practices and careless internet activities.
Most of our arguments for (or against) a particular piece of software stem as much from comfortable familiarity as from trusted performance. To a large degree this is justifiable, as a program we are not able to use with ease and comfort might be worse than having none at all.
I currently use the following as permanent protection:
- Avast 4.8 Pro (having fallen out with AVG),
- SuperAntispyware Pro,
- Windows Defender,
- SpywareBlaster.
For on-demand, I have:
- A-Squared Free
- AVG-AS (ex Ewido) Free
- Spybot S&D (mainly for nostalgia, I suppose…).
My firewall is ZoneAlarm 6.1.744, Free. (I have a Pro license, for this and for v.7xx, but prefer the simpler free, and earlier, version - comfortable familiarity?)
Over some time, I have compiled a folder of captive “nasties” that I use to try to test (and, in my own way, ‘evaluate’) the various malware scans, etc.
They have been gathered from various sources, including P2P sources, and the quarantine chests of several anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. They also include a Trojan simulator (www.misec.net/trojansimulator) and the spycar files (www.spycar.org).
The total number of files (at this time) is 45.
They range in nature from benign, but suspicious, to downright evil.
The following figures might be of interest. They show how many of the 45 infected or suspect files were detected by different scans.
The results are, of course, not definitive, and I regard them merely as a general indicator of a program’s effectiveness as a malware detector.
(Reference, “i also keep windows defender on even though it does basically nothing”. This also was my opinion; however, the detection rate for Defender might be surprising - it impressed me, especially as none of the test “nasties” was harvested from Defender’s quarantine files.)
Scan n/45 Detected
A-Squared Free 20
Windows Defender 17
Avast 16
AVG-AS 6
SuperAntispyware 1
Spybot S&D 0
Kaspersky Online 18
Panda Online 16
Trend Online 7
Regards,
s.